The Text - Section 97
97. PERFECTIONISM OBSTRUCTS HAPPINESS -- MANIPULATION OF EMOTIONS
Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is this hour. Blessed is
your work.
Many people in all sincerity endeavor to find God. However, if they were asked exactly what
the search meant, how they imagined it to take place, it would be difficult for them to give a
meaningful answer. In such vague hopes and endeavors people, often unconsciously, find
themselves in an illusion, hazily imagining something that they cannot name.
Yet, of course, there is such a thing as "finding God." In reality and in health, this is a very
concrete process. There is nothing hazy, unrealistic, or illusory about it. When speaking of "finding
God," people think of many different things. What finding God actually means is finding the real
self. If you find your self to some degree, you are in comparative harmony. You understand and
perceive the laws of the universe. You are capable of loving and relating, and experiencing joy. You
are truly self-responsible. You have the integrity and courage to be yourself, even at the expense of
giving up approval. All of this signifies your having found God -- by whatever name the process
may be designated. It might also be called "coming home from self-alienation."
There are many indications of true selfhood. Take for instance the capacity to experience and
to give joy. You cannot give joy if you are not a joyful person. How can you become joyful living in
a very imperfect world?
People's conscious or unconscious concepts of a joyful life are always connected with a
perfect life. One cannot enjoy life if one is imperfect; neither can one if one's neighbors, life
situation, and relationships are imperfect as well. This is the cause of one of humanity's great inner
conflicts and confusions. Intellectually, you all know that there is no perfection in this life. This is
why you often repress your reactions to an imperfect situation -- and repression causes the conflict
and confusion to increase rather than to decrease. It is one thing to profess a certain knowledge on
the surface, and it is quite another to experience it emotionally. In the course of this work, you have
often come across discrepancies of this sort, but you are still unaware of your inner demand for
perfection.
I have discussed this subject in many connections in the past, but consider it necessary to
connect it now to the theme of self-alienation and the denial of joy in life through perfectionism. I
venture to say, my friends, that none of you, no matter how much progress you have made, are quite
aware to what extent your need for perfection alienates you from your true self and at the same time
prohibits a joyful life. I do not mean a life of one hundred percent joy, no, but a life in which you
live fully and derive the joy of experience, of growth, of feeling, to a much greater extent than you
do now.
Strange as this may seem, the more you accept imperfection, the more joy you will give and
receive. Your capacity for happiness depends on your capacity to accept imperfection -- not in
words or theories, but in your emotional experience. As you well know, these are two very different
matters. It takes a great deal of self-search, systematic work, and the utter will to be candid with
yourself to uncover the discrepancy in you and to accept it even for the moment.
Only in accepting, let us say, an imperfect relationship -- and this by no means implies the
unhealthy submissiveness that is born out of fear of loss or disapproval -- will you derive and give
joy in the relationship. Only through accepting your own imperfection can you begin to grow and
experience the joy that comes from your own individuality. This is so because your demands are
incompatible with reality as you know it.
Most of the time you are not even aware of what falls short of perfection in your own
perception. This makes it impossible for you to grow enough to be able to accept imperfection.
You repress your lack: your unfulfillments, your frustrations. You are not fully aware of them. You
vaguely skip over them, knowing that perfection cannot be had. You do not realize how great a
destructive energy you generate by being unaware of your unfulfillment.
The repression is harmful for two reasons: first, if you had chosen awareness you would see
that much frustration is unnecessary and can be eliminated by changing the patterns responsible for
such frustrations. Second, when you repress you cannot accept what is impossible to change --
namely, imperfection as such. You must be aware in order to discriminate between changing to
obtain more fulfillment and simply wishing to accept the status quo because this is the easier way.
Deep inside, you often rebel against whatever is unchangeable in your world merely because no
perfection can ever exist. At the same time, your spiritual growth stagnates because your
perfectionism keeps you from changing to inner patterns which would bring you much more
fulfillment.
An important step is to allow yourself the luxury of facing your desires, unfulfillments,
longings, your complaints against life or fate or others or yourself. Find in what respect you feel
shortchanged. You resent that something in your life is imperfect, yet to fully accept imperfection,
you must first become fully aware of your resentment against it. Only when you fully face the
resentment against imperfection can you begin to accept it. And only when you accept imperfection
can you lead a joyful life and derive enjoyment from your relationships. But as long as you
unconsciously strive for a perfection that does not exist on your earth, you cannot accept what is,
and therefore your life and your relationships will be spoiled. You cannot grow, and thus change
whatever is changeable and could be much better, even though never perfect.
To be capable of joy only if you accept imperfection, and to be capable of growth only if you
accept your own imperfection seems paradoxical. But if you really think about it, you will see that
this is so. The task sounds easy to accomplish, but in practice it is often difficult because you are so
unaware of your reactions and feelings. You have so many subterfuges, so many hidden crevices in
your soul, that becoming aware of them demands your full attention and focused inner will. Yet
once you have made a certain progress, the task will become the simplest thing in the world because
it is based on truth.
Again, the reality, or truth, of your world is imperfection. And the reality, or truth, of your
personal state of soul is non-acceptance of imperfection. You will not have a sound foundation
from which to proceed, unless you face the reality of both truths -- one in the world and the other in
your soul.
Even your progress in the pathwork is permeated with this perfectionistic attitude, be it ever
so subtle. Listen to its voice: "I should have resolved my problems already. I cannot be happy as
long as my problems are unresolved; therefore, I must be impatient, compulsive, and restless about
it. I cannot live in the present, but must somehow always look for and live in the future, when I
hope to be perfect, and finally experience perfect happiness, perfect love, and perfect relationships."
This attitude is never conscious, never formulated with such clarity; nevertheless, if your emotions
were translated, they would often convey just that. Whenever it dawns on you that you will never
resolve all your problems in this life, you have a tendency to be discouraged or even to feel, "What is
the use? Why then should I face all these truths about myself?" Such reaction indicates exactly the
attitude of perfectionism about your spiritual growth. Your unconscious expectation is complete
perfection, and not step-by-step growth.
You do not have to be problem-free. You cannot be. You do not have to be already perfect
to live fully, to increase your awareness, to grow steadily in your capacity for full emotional
experience. All you have to do is to see into yourself and evaluate what you see, then make inner
choices, which entail the flexibility of change. In accepting imperfection, you become less imperfect.
For without doing so you can never really be flexible enough to change. Your haste, and your
shame for not being perfect, create a rigid wall that makes growth and change impossible.
The trouble is that people are so often hindered by the either/or attitude. They feel either
that they must strive for immediate perfection, negating their still existing imperfection, or that they
must give up striving for progress entirely. To accept imperfection would then mean to stagnate and
not even attempt any growth and change. These two extremes are interdependent, as are all extreme
attitudes. Only by letting go of both attitudes can the healthy, constructive, and productive attitude
become an integral part of one's being.
There is another subtle deviation in the wrong attitude of perfectionism; it is your
unconscious emphasis on becoming perfect according to standards imposed on you by the world, by
religion, by rules -- in other words, by outer authority. This effort, be it ever so subtle, causes and
leads to further self-alienation. The productive approach is to make conscious what you feel, desire,
fear, and then to find your own innermost goal, the goal of your real self.
If your focus is on growth rather than on perfection, you will live in the now. You will
dispense with superimposed values and find your own. You will dispense with subtle pretenses and
superimpositions and with the hidden but nevertheless present attitude that you do what you do for
appearance's sake, rather than for yourself. Finding your own values leads to selfhood and away
from self-alienation. This will bring you to a state of harmony with yourself; it will anchor you in
yourself.
Many of you will quickly say, "Oh, I do not pretend; I do not do anything for appearance's
sake." Of course I do not refer to a crass outer way, but to the inner subtleties of your emotional
striving, from which not one human being is entirely free.
So accept the imperfection, for only then can you grow. The very existence of your
perfectionism stunts growth, causes rigidity and inner extremism.
You are so conditioned to manipulate your emotions that it will take considerable time and
attention on your part to gradually realize how you are actually doing so. Again, perfectionism leads
you to do this. Since you recognize many of your conscious feelings as imperfect, you try to
forcefully superimpose inauthentic emotions over them. How can you be your real self when your
emotional life cannot function naturally and organically, unhampered by superimposed commands?
The real self always dares to be spontaneous. Spontaneity is out of the question when emotions are
hampered. It becomes a task in itself, possible only after much progress in this work, to observe
how your feelings are not allowed to function naturally.
Tampering with the free flow of feelings can happen in many subtle ways. A forceful
overemotionalism, overdramatization, exaggeration, talking yourself into stronger feelings than you
actually have, is an example. You might even deceive yourself that you are not directing the flow of
your emotions at all. We will look at this phenomenon in the light of self-alienation to understand
why this seemingly harmless process is so damaging.
But first let us look at another way you manipulate your emotions: by prohibiting their full
force, and stultifying their intensity. Both procedures tamper with the natural flow; the emotional
life is not trusted to function organically and not encouraged to grow. A wrong kind of caution, an
unrealistic fear, and a forceful will -- the forcing current -- play a role in establishing this pattern.
Both ways can be, and most of the time are, adopted by the same person. Which particular way you
resort to depends on many factors, such as your personality structure, your pseudo-solutions, your
life problems, and so on.
The forcing current comes from your strong repressed needs, all the more forceful because
you are unaware of them, or, at least, of their intensity. The moment you are fully aware of a need
and understand all its aspects, the urgency recedes, as does the compulsiveness, which, at least in
part, is responsible for your tampering with your genuine emotions. The urgency of unrecognized
needs causes you to build up your emotions out of all proportion. The unconscious reasoning is: "If
my emotions are strong enough, I will be gratified." Or, if you happen to be a more fearful and
pessimistic character, you will not admit their existence at all, let alone their urgency, and thus you
will squeeze these emotions out of existence -- out of your awareness that is.
In neither instance do you afford yourself the luxury of letting the emotions flow, observing
them, learning from them and recognizing the true state of affairs within you. Making your
emotions stronger or weaker than they actually are is a forceful tampering that cripples their
functioning. Your intuitive, creative, and spontaneous capacities cannot unfold. You substitute
other faculties for the emotional ones and thus discrepancies and disharmonies come into existence.
The richness of feeling is prohibited and thus you impoverish yourself. You live on the periphery,
which is the shallow living I discussed earlier.
Full awareness of what you really feel and want is your first aim. Sit back, so to speak, and
allow your feelings to reach the surface of your consciousness. This does not necessarily mean to
act on them, but when the feelings show themselves in their natural intensity, or their lack of
intensity compared to what you thought you felt before, you will get a good inkling of what it means
to be your real self. This practice will give you a very different outlook on certain problems in
yourself and in your life.
You recurrently ask the question: "How can I tell what my real self is? I am so used to all
these false levels, these superimposed, defensive layers, that they have become second nature, and I
can no longer tell which is the real me and which is a protective defense mechanism." By observing
emotional exaggeration versus repression you will finally see how the real self reacts, often in-
between the two high or low points, and how your real feelings, when they are not manipulated by
unconscious needs, will create a very different inner situation and therefore eventually a different
outer situation.
This is not exactly the kind of work you can do in your personal work sessions. It may, and
will, come up for discussion, but such awareness can be reached only by quiet observation when you
are alone. Of course, the whole process of this work, privately and in your groups, enables you to
become more aware of what really goes on in you.
The actual discovery of your genuine feelings, as opposed to the manipulated emotions, will
come when you relax by yourself and allow your true feelings to surface. When you review how you
reacted to certain incidents, you will be able to ask yourself whether your fears, desires, or the
ingrained principles you think you have to adhere to are responsible for overplaying or underplaying
your emotions. Is one of your "shoulds," regarding the other person or yourself, responsible for
your tampering with your natural genuine feelings? The truth about your feelings cannot ever be
ascertained by anyone but yourself. As you condition yourself to observe your real feelings without
manipulation one way or another, a new strength, a new certainty will arise out of you, because these
real feelings, unmanipulated, come from your real self. But this happens only after you have gone
through the maze of experiencing all sorts of other emotions that are superimposed by your pseudo-
solutions and defense mechanisms. If you dare not experience these painful emotions -- perhaps
because you shy away from feeling a slight pain, or you think you should already be above all that,
being already perfect -- how can you discover what is responsible for them and come to know the
greater depth of the reality of your being? How then can you convince yourself of the utter truth
that all these painful emotions -- whether exaggerated or repressed -- are illusions, and that you really
do not feel that way at all, even though you are now in the throes of destructive, painful emotions?
You have conditioned yourself into them, but that does not make them real.
The discovery of their unreality is a tremendous relief, but you cannot come to it if you are
not willing to sit back and let your feelings come to the fore and ask yourself pertinent questions.
Dare to feel what you feel, regardless of right or wrong, of what you think you should feel, of what
you think you are expected to feel, or, if you overdramatize, what you think another person should
feel or do. For this is usually the main reason for exaggerating the intensity of your feelings. It is a
measure of forcing another.
So observe this, my friends. All of you have both these ways of manipulating your emotions.
The overdramatization is connected with the pseudo-solution of power. The repression of feelings
is connected with the pseudo-solution of withdrawal, false serenity, escape from living and
experiencing. Both alternatives lead to shallowness, and not to real experiences. Offhand, you may
say that the one who exaggerates his feelings and makes them stronger than they actually are does, in
fact, experience very acutely. And I say, my friends, that everything that is not genuine is conducive
to, and results in, self-alienation, and therefore shallowness. Even if you seem to thrive on
emotionalism, this is not the real experience of your soul. You put on the overemotionalism,
perhaps because, quite unconsciously, you thus wish to bend life, and others, to your needs. It is, in
the true sense, a manipulation. As for choosing withdrawal, which is connected with underplaying
what you really feel, the outcome is obvious.
Do concentrate on this now, my friends. It will yield most important results. Ask yourself
what you really and truly feel. Seeing it may sometimes not be so easy, because you may skip over
an incident, leaving it vague and not registering any particular reaction. In reality, there is a reaction
on your part. This process of ignoring your true reactions is a universal phenomenon that causes
diminished awareness of life and self, as well as self-alienation. Awareness of life and of others can
come only as a result of self-awareness. And self-awareness is just the process of recognizing how
you really and truly react. Perhaps your outward reaction is not that different from your inner
reaction, your feelings are simply dulled and you react in a state of half-sleep. It takes time, effort,
concentration, and training to wake up and become acutely aware; it does not happen overnight.
Once you get started on this particular segment of your path, you will often find that you
become aware of a certain reaction on your part perhaps only a few days after the event. Your first
impulse will be to be angry at yourself for noticing only so much later what you "should" have been
aware of instantly. This indicates progress, however, because until now you might never have
become aware of your real reaction. You might have passed it by in utter blindness. Delayed
reaction is certainly progress compared with no conscious reaction. In this respect, too, only if you
accept your imperfection -- that you cannot, all at once, become perfectly aware -- will you rejoice in
your growing process and thus proceed further to shorten the interval between the incident and the
awareness of your reaction. The synchronization of these two factors can come only after a step-by-
step development. Only with the awareness that most of the time you are blind to your own
reactions can the blindness gradually vanish. And as you become more aware of what is really going
on in you, you will become aware of the unconscious, still-existing perfectionism that makes it
impossible for you to accept people, yourself, relationships, and life for what they are. Therefore,
you cannot cope with any real situation and are bound to make the worst of it. Thus you make it
impossible to derive joy from an imperfect situation, be it a relationship, or your own inner state
which you otherwise could have enjoyed.
QUESTION: If you have an aggressive feeling and you don't like it, but it is very strong, your
common sense is telling you that you shouldn't feel this way. You understand with your mind that
perhaps the person with whom you are angry has problems himself, but that doesn't help. How do
you handle that?
ANSWER: The first step is the realization that you cannot yet feel differently. Here,
perfectionism comes in, because something in you says, "I should not have these feelings of
aggression. I should know better because he acts out of his own unresolved problems." All this
may be true, yet in it is contained the "I should not" of perfectionism. However, if you say to
yourself, "I cannot help feeling this way because I grope in the dark, and I, as a human being, often
grope in the dark. I do not know many answers. I do not understand other people," then you are in
truth. But because somehow you all feel, "I really should understand everyone, everyone else should
understand me, and I should know all the answers concerning my life and my personal human
relationships," you express the very attitude that makes it so difficult. Only by accepting your
human limitations will the aggressiveness and hostility vanish; because underneath you will discover
and become aware of being hurt, of feeling rejected. Your shame and fear of these emotions make
you superimpose the hard and much more unpleasant feelings of aggressiveness. Once you become
aware of the hurt, which is a more genuine element, it is easier to cope with your feelings, and soon
the hurt will dissolve and make room for even more genuine feelings which are still closer to the real
you. But first of all, you have to accept your human limitations; you have to dispense with the
expectation that you, as well as others, should always understand and know. If you can own up to
groping in the dark, you might be able to pinpoint in your mind what it is that you are unclear about.
Accept that the lack of clarity may remain, or it may even clear up by itself, simply because your
resistance against it has disappeared. Accept also your still existing aggressiveness, asking yourself
whether it is not a distortion of hurt. Then own up to the hurt. This way you may find the answer
much sooner than through the cramped and compulsive drive that says that you already "should not
have aggressiveness." Do you understand that?
QUESTIONER: Yes.
QUESTION: Isn't this kind of joyful acceptance of lack of perfection conducive to a loss of
ambition for further development?
ANSWER: Not at all. I spoke about this, I believe, quite extensively in this lecture. When
you reread it, you will understand. Let me only repeat: Distinguish between perfection and
growing. If you wish to grow, and if you realize that you can only grow a step at a time, while still
being far away from perfection, you cannot stagnate. Acceptance of imperfection does not mean
the wish to remain static. It means only that you know that you never become perfect in this life,
but wish with all your heart to grow and change wherever it is possible. This is a decided difference.
As I said, this is the only way you can grow. However, being perfectionistic is such a strain, leads to
such discouragement and rigidity and pretense, that growth becomes impossible. You already know
this to some extent. Wherever you have found your great idealized self-image, with all its tyrannical
demands upon you, with all the shoulds and musts, you can now see that where this image ruled you
is exactly where you have not grown. You have only grown where your idealized self did not govern
you. Perfectionism makes for pretense and rigidity -- and this excludes growth and development, as
well as change. Only when you can be relaxed about your imperfections and do not need to pretend
in order to hide them, only then do you grow, only then is the soil fertile for growth.
QUESTION: May I ask about this subject too? To differentiate between goal-direction and
compulsion, would you explain how the latter falls into the circle of pride, self-will, and fear?
ANSWER: Where there is perfectionism, which prohibits growth rather than encourages it,
all three are present: pride, self-will, and fear. There is the pride of wanting and needing to be
perfect. And since a part of you knows that you are not perfect, you pretend. Again, I emphasize:
this does not concern the whole of you. There may be many sides to your being where you are quite
relaxed and free, and do not pretend. But there are other areas in which, emotionally if not
intellectually, you feel you cannot admit certain things. What may appear an imperfection to you
may not appear as such to another person, and vice versa. You may be ashamed of not always
winning in certain areas of life, and therefore pretend that you don't care, while you do not pretend
in others. This pretense is not a crass outer falsification, but a much more subtle inner strain.
Rejection or failure may subjectively constitute imperfection of which you are ashamed -- and where
there is such shame, there must be pretense. All this implies a fierce pride.
The self-will says, "I have to be perfect already." Since one knows quite well that this is not
true, one tries to adhere at least to a superficial perfection. Again, this is pretense. Both pride and
self-will lead to pretense. Or, to put it in other words, they lead away from truth. All this is so
subtle that it is almost impossible to understand if you do not live this pathwork and have not come
across areas of your emotions that used to be hidden from sight and awareness. If you do not make
it your goal to uncover them, and are not involved in this process of self-finding, these will merely
be words which do not mean very much. Or if they do, they mean something at the moment, but
will be forgotten in no time. This even happens to you who work on this path.
The fear must exist in a double way. On the one hand, it exists because you fear that "If I am
not perfect, I will be unhappy, or disapproved of, or not loved." Or, the fear is, "If the other person
is imperfect, he or she will prohibit my happiness." You try to push this constant fear away by self-
will and by the pride of pretense. Then there is the second fear which is a particularly poisonous
one, the fear of exposure that you are not as perfect as you think you should be, that your pretense
may be shown up. In order to guard against exposure, you invest valuable energies and soul forces
into the superstructure, which impoverishes your life, your capacity to experience real feelings, and
necessitates repression and self-deception.
QUESTION: In a previous lecture you mentioned secondary reactions and primary reactions.
Am I correct in assuming that secondary reactions are the ones that come from manipulating
emotions, while the primary reactions are from the real self?
ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right. But it is not quite the same in that we are now on a
much deeper level. Secondary reactions are a result of what we discussed tonight. They are the
effect of the cause now under discussion. We have now reached the level in our work where we
begin to see causes, while in the past we dealt much more with effects. But you are quite right in
seeing a connection. You see, secondary reactions, or the lack of primary ones, are due to
inhibition, lack of spontaneity -- and this is due to manipulation.
QUESTION: It is a very subtle thing I want to ask and it is very hard to explain. I went
through a long time of deep depression and then I found that I had failed in everything I wanted.
After I realized that, and also what you were talking about -- my complex of perfectionism -- I
finally accepted my mistakes. It took me a long time, but anyway I now faced my failure and was at
first very unhappy about it. Some days later I accepted the failures, the mistakes and everything. I
felt a wonderful revelation and relief. This kept on, somehow, but I don't know how. Sometimes I
have the feeling my heart is still crying about all I've lost. And then I don't know whether I cover it
up, or whether it is real or not.
ANSWER: Yes, you have made an important step forward, but you have not continued. You
have remained there and have not seen what follows. I hope you will see it, because even if I tell
you, as you know from previous experience, this will not help very much if you do not discover it
for yourself. However, I will tell you. You see, the failures are exaggerated because you tend very
much toward building up emotions out of all proportion. It would be important for you to
investigate this and become aware that this is so, as well as why it is so. For there is a great
exaggeration about such complete failure of everything you wanted. There are things you did want
and which you attained, so that you are not a failure there. You see only what you wanted and did
not get, and forget that you also wanted what you now have.
But there is also something else responsible for your present uncertainty. Investigate the
motivations, both healthy and unhealthy, and ask yourself why you desired what you failed in.
Superficially this may seem obvious, yet it is not that simple. You will find a curious mixture of the
healthy and unhealthy. You will find that, partly, your motivations in wanting something that in
itself was perfectly all right were governed by superimposed, immature reasons, crutches, rather than
the reality of your own being. On the other hand, you will find that the healthy motivations you did
not allow to function were put aside due to your perfectionism. You prohibited your own creative
unfoldment just because of your perfectionism, so that both the healthy and the unhealthy
motivations contributed to the unfulfillment, or the "failure." You chose the goal out of partly
unhealthy motives, and you prohibited yourself from reaching the goal entirely out of unhealthy
motives. This may appear like a paradox, but do you follow what I mean?
QUESTIONER: A hundred percent! It is so right!
ANSWER: Now, if you investigate and analyze that fully, you will come across a new insight,
finding, contrary to your present emotions, that it is never too late. The same factors, if transposed
into healthy currents, can still give you fulfillment, perhaps not exactly in the same way, but not any
less. You know that now, in your intellect, but emotionally you cannot accept it. You will not be
able to accept it until and unless you completely understand what I am indicating here.
QUESTIONER: Yes, I understand that entirely.
QUESTION: You were speaking about our true self and our fulfillment, our closeness to
God. Can you say a word about an individual making progress along this path by just doing the
work that is his to do? The village blacksmith -- I don't know how deeply he has to probe. He
makes good horseshoes. He has unhappiness in his life. He seems to be quiet. Brother Lawrence
in the kitchen. The surgeon may come home and say, "I skipped a stitch." But he saved a man's
life. He did good surgery. Is it necessary for a person to proceed in this rather deep and involved
search of the subconscious when he feels he is doing God's work and has fulfillment on that level?
ANSWER: The human entity is a deep, involved, complex being. Therefore, in order to be
undivided and unified, these levels have eventually to be reached by some process or method. It is
entirely possible that someone is fulfilled in one way, while another aspect of his being waits for
unfoldment and growth that cannot be reached merely by doing good work. Yet, a number of
people on this earth may not be spiritually mature enough for such deep probing. In their life work
and in meeting their daily problems as best as they can, without the awareness of their deeper
feelings, they do the most they can. On the other hand, there are isolated beings who are spiritually
and emotionally so mature that in their own way they follow such a path, even though it may appear
different in method and organization, but the end result is the same. But for those who are
somewhere in-between on the scale, it is necessary to become aware of what goes on in the deep,
involved, and complex levels of their soul, in order to attain the maximum development in all areas
of their personality, not only in one or two aspects of life. For this, a certain help is necessary, some
sort of organized method, for working alone one is usually too involved to see clearly.
Overemphasis on those aspects of the personality that function smoothly may lead the person to
overlook what is not in order yet and what could be brought out.
However, the work should never be approached in a spirit of "God demands it of me." Then
it would be compulsive and indicate, somewhere in the psyche, a wrong approach to God, to
universal law, and to the self. It should not be done in a spirit of fulfilling a superimposed duty.
The more you grow into life and into yourself, the more you will realize that you wish to do it in
order to live a fuller and happier life, and thus give more happiness. You will wish to override your
resistance to facing that which you suspect is there but wish that it were not. It is not so much a
question of necessity, but of making the best, the fullest, the most meaningful experience out of
your life -- in every possible respect, not just in work alone. Getting to know one's unconscious
mind is not something entirely unconnected with the soul, with one's being. Quite the contrary! In
the last analysis, it is not possible to grow spiritually to the fullest without psychoanalysis, or self-
search by any other name. There is no separation between spiritual living and psychological
processes, if you consider it from the point of view of seeing the truth in yourself. This is so simple,
even though certainly not easy. Good actions are fine, but there comes a point in one's
development when more is at stake than good, kind, helpful actions and fine execution of one's
work.
QUESTIONER: Thank you.
Be blessed, all of you. Continue in your work, in your step-by-step growth, for that is the
glory of your life. It is not to fulfill a duty, but to make yourself more capable of being in joy, and
thus capable of giving it on in your now imperfect life, within your imperfect relationships. Be
blessed, my friends. Be in peace. Be in God.